Run-dmc Gets Back To Business, Rapping About Love Of The Lord

May 13, 1993|By David Hinckley, New York Daily News.

NEW YORK — Not since Bob Dylan made born-again rock records in the late '70s has a major artist put Christianity so openly front and center as Run-DMC has done on "Down With the King," the durable rap group's return to the chart wars.

In popular lore, Run-DMC has always been associated more with the elements of daily life: music, women, street talk. This is, after all, a group that once got a $1.5 million endorsement deal for singing about their shoes.

But if some people might be surprised to hear them rapping about love of the Lord, don't count Joseph Simmons (Run), Darryl McDaniels (DMC) or Jason Mizell (Jam Master Jay) among them.

"We've always been preachers," says Simmons. "We've always told people what we feel. Check out `It's Like That.' If you're thinking about some of the things we are, we want you to know how it went down for us."

Simmons is on to something here: The best rappers, from Melle Mel up through Chuck D, have always owed as much to the pulpit as the street corner. "What we're doing is, like, Christian with an attitude," Mizell says.

That attitude has been shaped in part by 10 years as godfathers of rap. The story of those years, told indirectly on "Down With the King," has not all been the glory casual observers might think.

Simmons was charged with rape in Ohio, then acquitted. McDaniels overcame what he told The Source magazine was a serious drinking problem. A scar on Mizell's forehead testifies to a serious auto crash.

Dissatisfaction came to a head after the group's last album, "Back From Hell," sold barely a half million copies-less than a sixth of what they sold a few years earlier. When they started to promote the new record this year, they were second-billed to Naughty by Nature at Radio City.

It all came as a jolt, Simmons admits.

"We had no idea people didn't like the last album," he says. "We'd been out on tour, packing houses, people going crazy, then we got back and they told us we weren't big anymore."

He doesn't try to cover up the irony here: How can you somehow be unimportant when you still put on a show like Run-DMC? As well as Run and DMC work together on record, their call-and-response raps-another link to the church, it might be noted-just get better on stage. Jay's beats, too.

So when they hear the word "comeback," it's like, "Come back from what?"

"We give you the best show of your life," says Simmons. "We blow people away. Being Christians hasn't changed that. It's made us harder."